Would you rather have been a Beatle, or have walked on the moon?

it's easy to take this for granted but really the moon landing's probably the human race's most astonishing accomplishment

Have you heard the new Daft Punk album?

buzz aldrin had a weird post-moon career, including being TV producer of OUT OF THIS WORLD about a girl with gleep powers and staring troy mcclure inspiration doug mcclure.

comparing the fricking Beatles to Shakespeare is some moon-trip level challopery

no comparison intended, just the idea of being personally (or among a small group of people) responsible for a large body of work vs. being a part of essentially a singular event that was orchestrated by many people spending immense money and human effort toward a common goal. not a perfect analogy obv.

and as much as I like the space program, I can't help but feel like there's something ultimately a little shameful about it all, as addressed by gil scott-heron for example. we can't even feed everyone on earth but we put together arguably the greatest scientific effort in human history to put a man on the moon, mostly as part of a dick waving contest with our supposed enemies. and 40 years later one of the richest guys in the world is spending his vast fortune to try to get basic malaria medication to people who need it. but hey, whitey's on the moon.

we can feed everyone on earth, we choose not to

and for similar reasons to the race for the moon, i guess

right

tbf gil scot-heron might've felt differently if it was a black astronaut on the moon

xp

well he'd have had to change the song title anyway

being a beatle sounds like hell after, like, 1964. can't go anywhere without getting mobbed, end up hating your best friends, bad trips, alcoholism, slow steady artistic decline, dumb kids bugging you for autographs and then shooting you. maybe i'd want to be lennon on the day he made out with ronnie spector.

whereas i bet almost none of the moon guys ever gets recognized on the street -- maybe aldrin does.

...

i can't even

Seems rather pointless to consider looking back on the act of walking on the moon without taking into account what that would entail in terms of a life lived but w/e.

The two 'events' don't really lend themselves towards direct comparison. Guess you could characterise them in terms of vague, broadly applicable themes and choose whatever's more your speed.

Looking back on life as a Beatle at 70

• Creativity
• Culture
• Jouissance
• Adulation
• Bigger than Jesus
• Influence
• Inspiration
• Vast Wealth
• No matter how much boomers go on about it (endlessly) future generations will never grasp or care about how pervasive Beatlemania was.
• "Who the fuck is Paul McCartney? #openingceremony"

• Science/Technology
• Discipline
• Precision
• Adventure
• Nationalism
• Cold War
• Danger
• Inspiration
• Looking at accelerating rate technological advancement yet knowing that such a feat will not be repeated in your lifetime.
• "Buzz Lightyear was the first man to walk on the moon"

I'm a realistic person, cynical to some. But I would take no personal pride in having gone the moon. What did I have to do for it? Study physics (lol yeah right), train for some years, sit in a rocket that shoots me up there, put down my footsteps in moon-dust and presto. It would not make me feel profoundly proud.

If it hadn't been me on the moon, if I had chickened out or whatever, it would have been the next person in line. Writing an oeuvre like the Beatles did is irreplacable; you can't just ask someone else to do it. So if I did that, if I was that creative, then I could indeed one day look back and think "fuck, I did alright".

all I can tell from that is that you don't actually know what any of the astronauts DID to go to the moon, or don't care

which is fine

your reasoning is crazy flawed is all

It might be interesting to take the historical aspect out of the equation and just ask yourself which of these scenarios you would choose:

NASA calls you up tomorrow and wants to send you to the moon. You have to undergo all of the training, etc. and then you get to go on a moon landing once, followed by a lifetime gig working at NASA.

vs

A major label calls you up tomorrow and wants to make you a star. They have a foolproof strategy guaranteed to make you an international musical superstar that will bring vast wealth and a career lasting well into your old age.

...

i can't even

you can't even what?

I just wish all you hand wavey moon=meh people would read one fucking book, or watch a documentary about the moon missions instead of just looking at a picture of the moon in google image search and saying yeah doesn't seem like that big of a deal whatever idgi

xpost lol JD that wasn't aimed at you it was just a general overwhelmedness

all I can tell from that is that you don't actually know what any of the astronauts DID to go to the moon, or don't care

which is fine

your reasoning is crazy flawed is all

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), woensdag 15 mei 2013 1:54 (55 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My reasoning is not "flawed". It is merely different from your reasoning.

If asked which life I would have preferred, having the idea I actually did something that matters to me is important to me. Writing a body of work lilke the Beatles did would fulfil me with much more satisfaction than being on the moon.

It might not be your way of reasoning, but calling it "crazy flawed" is a stretch...

xxpost NASA

I would choose NASA

haha ok, all cool

VG otm

LBI your reasoning is flawed because you made up a bunch of stuff about what you think astronauts do

i can call it another name but that's what it is. you weren't just merely expressing an opinion but laying it out like it's some kind of rational weighing up of going to the moon vs being a beatle so as such to me it is flawed because it's imbalanced

My sister lost her Wings 8 track, cuntface McCartney is on the moon.

i'm cool with ppl liking the beatles, I have no beef with the beatles

but the anti moon arguments are just handwavey garbage to me. you can tell me I choose beatles because [why the beatles are awesome] and I can accept that

but I choose the beatles because [made up things about astronauts because I don't know and don't care and don't want to know and don't want to care] annoys the living fuck out of me

going to the moon seems like hard work

fuck that shit

i would also choose nasa easy.

LBI your reasoning is flawed because you made up a bunch of stuff about what you think astronauts do

i can call it another name but that's what it is. you weren't just merely expressing an opinion but laying it out like it's some kind of rational weighing up of going to the moon vs being a beatle so as such to me it is flawed because it's imbalanced

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), woensdag 15 mei 2013 1:59 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I didn't "make up a bunch of stuff". I also don't think being an astronaut is a doozy, or easy. I just don't think I would derive any personal pride from it.

And I wasn't being rational either! The possibility of having been a Beatle - and especially focusing on the life *after* that, or *after* having been on the moon - is a personal interpretation everyone will have when posed this question.

I see you persists in saying my reasoning is flawed or "imbalanced", but you are confusing it for how I, as an individual, take up this question, trying to project the posed theory on my life/my personality. That is not something I can be 'wrong' at, at most it can be different from yours.

The poll question isn't what is a bigger achievement, astronauts on the moon or the Beatles iirc

followup poll: who's life would you have rather lead - chuck yeager or pete best?

bonus side question:

do you think anyone has ever had sex in space?

besides like jane fonda?

besides, under, over, pretty much anything, however you want to define sex

there was a married astronaut couple in space a few years or so ago that i vaguely remember terry gross asking this to.

imagine being the first earthling to have sex...in SPACE! i could see this thought popping up during those long months on the ISS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_Packets

uggggh okay after an hour commuting it's clear that that extra cup of coffe launched me into crazypants rage town. whoa.
LBI, if it's not too late, I'd like to let you have your opinion and walk that whole thing waaaaaaaaaay back :)

We good VG, no big deal <3

yay! :)

tl;dr coming up, just need to get words out of my head in general

the way I feel about being someone who has a memory of walking on the moon, that's a thing I've wanted since I was a kid. the post-walk life of an astronaut is def exhausting, as Neil Armstrong's retreat from public life clearly showed. though it's kind of a nice thing that he was able to be so reclusive and still die as a hero to many who grew up just accepting that they would never really see him in public ever again. people seemed okay with that. but for me, man I would take a lifetime of being asked the same questions over and over again because there was a memory that I had inside of me that was a vision of something only a handful of people ever saw in their lifetime. it's not so much being the national hero and the glory of going to space but standing on that celestial body with your own two feet, looking up into space from the moon as we would look up into the sky from earth... maybe I sound like a weird weepy spacenerd but that means a lot to me, the thought of living your whole life with that experience.

and as an aside: being an astronaut back then, or even now, isn't like being a jockey on a racehorse or being a racecar driver. especially with the apollo missions, and gemini and mercury etc, those astronauts were the best in their field, working with engineers who were the best in their field, and they were all hired to work together to achieve something no one had done before. the astronauts weren't just jocks in silver suits. they tested and studied and problem-solved too. it's like, I dunno...working to build a car and then driving it further than anyone's driven before. multiply that x 1000. there's no way that someone that involved in the process from the beginning doesn't feel a sense of pride in an achievement like that. to me, anyway.

MOON all the way. SPACE, the final frontier!

I don't even like the Beatles that much. I really like space, though. Space is the place.

this is a good question

we can't even feed everyone on earth but we put together arguably the greatest scientific effort in human history to put a man on the moon, mostly as part of a dick waving contest with our supposed enemies

No disrespect to Gil Scott-Heron, but the dough would not have been used for that if there had been no space program. Trust me.

yeah but more generally if the cold war didn't happen, all the money that would have gone to that -- which includes military and space program spending -- might have gone toward building a stronger public infrastructure, which seemed to be something the public had more interest in in the immediate post-war period as compared to now. maybe this could be a thread, but alternate history speculation isn't always the most fruitful thing.

also, i want to say thank you to everyone for your contributions to this, my first poll. i think it's been an interesting discussion.

I was somewhat blunt in my portrayal of the post-walk life of an astronaut. If I came across as downplaying the achievement and technological progress, I did not intend to. But with what you just said in mind, pairing it with the poll question, I think what it boils down to for me is: I don't want to be a hero in people's eyes, and that technical progress is not something I would feel very proud of. I don't want to be that person considered unique as a consequence from a space program. I would love the experience of being on the moon, but I don't think it is something I would want to be reduced to for the rest of my life. And that is what people will do to an astronaut, definitely. Now I know McCartney is still reduced to "he was a Beatle", inevitably, but I feel it's much easier to pull yourself away from that image.

"Standing on that celestical body with your own two feet".. Sing it sister! I would definitely adore that, obviously. It's not weepy spacenerd at all to me, it is awesome and it is awesome to want this or dream about it!

Maybe it's just because astronauts are such awfully righteous and "ok" folks, always walking the line. I could not ever do that, would not want to be that way. It would be a curse, a pox, on that once in a lifetime experience of walking on the moon.

it's like, I dunno...working to build a car and then driving it further than anyone's driven before

But baby, you can drive my car! :-)

that was an xp to VG

would you rather have written the entire collected works of shakespeare or have been one of the actors in your favorite movie?

is the movie SHOT ON THE MOON

This question is unnervingly keeping me occupied tonight, Treeship. Equal parts of well done, thank you and fuck you ;-)

tbh I'm pissed at treeship for this stupid reductive question

:)

VG poll: would you rather go to the moon or fuck you